


enough

by Emily_on_stage



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, F/F, Hermione needs a hug, Mental Breakdown, Panic Attacks, Ron Weasley Bashing, Time Turner (Harry Potter), girls supporting girls, it's not a relationship because theyre like 12 but they love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emily_on_stage/pseuds/Emily_on_stage
Summary: It was approaching 3:47am for the fourth time that evening and Hermione just wanted to sleep.(in which POA-verse Hermione is under way too much pressure and she just needs a bloody hug)
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ginny Weasley
Kudos: 39





	enough

It was approaching 3:47am for the fourth time that evening and Hermione just wanted to sleep. She’d finished her arithmancy homework in the first hour between three and four, a particularly nasty transfiguration essay on the risks posed by unregistered animagi in the second, six pages of ancient runes translation in the third, and was desperately trying to plough her way through Ron’s spelling mistakes in the fourth but his writing was just illegible and none of his argument made sense so she was really rewriting his entire essay. The time turner that glittered around her neck felt like it was pulling her into the ground; Hermione wasn’t sure if she could do another hour but this essay was due tomorrow and if she didn’t fix it for him it would just be another excuse for Ron to be angry with her on top of the whole firebolt debacle. Her eyes flicked guiltily to the copy of ‘Hurling Hexes and the Havoc they Hold’ she’d hoped to be able to get through tonight in case it held any clues to the state of the broom which had driven itself between Hermione and her two best friends, well, supposed best friends; they didn’t feel much like friends at the moment, having not spoken to her for almost two weeks. Blinking back the tears which had begun to prickle in her aching eyes, she tried to focus, if she just pushed through for one more hour then she would be able to finish Ron’s essay and read some of that book which might tell her something which she could tell to Flitwick and then maybe Harry could have his bloody broom back. Unless of course it turned out that she had been right, and then they’d be sorry right? If she saved Harry’s neck (and the rest of his limbs) from being destroyed by some cursed broomstick then they’d have to talk to her again. Hermione sometimes wondered if they held last year against her, although petrification was a relatively secure excuse for why she hadn’t been able to help the boys in the chamber of secrets she couldn’t help the guilt that twisted in her gut when she thought of Harry trying to fight off a basilisk all by himself.  
Shaking herself from yet another spiral, Hermione sifted through some of the parchment on the table in search of her wand, the ornate vinewood falling naturally between her fingers as she softly cast _tempus_ , groaning aloud when she saw it was 3:59am and she was not even close to finishing this essay. Another hour it was. The witch resignedly retrieved the time turner from under her jumper and raised it to eye level, forcing her exhausted brain to focus on the words inscribed into the golden pendant.  
 _I mark the hours, every one. Nor have I yet outrun the_ -  
‘Hermione?!’  
She started. The time turner fell from Hermione’s trembling hands and metal met glass with a soft ding as the pendant collided with a pot of ink in the centre of the table, tipping it over so that its full contents flooded across the desk, enveloping everything in its path with jet black liquid; Hermione’s wand, her arithmancy textbook, Ron’s essay…  
The cry that left the young witch as she saw all her hard work absorbed into black was shrill and panicked. As Hermione frantically tried to move everything else out of harm’s way her eyes found the sodden parchment which she had been so laboriously redrafting for the past hour and she briefly thought she might vomit. She lifted it off the table slowly, almost as if in a trance and turned to the figure in the doorway with wide, fearful eyes, black ink dripping down her wrists and pooling at her feet. Ginny Weasley looked back at her, taking in the way her whole body was trembling, the way her unfocused eyes were ringed with purple and the way Hermione Granger seemed to be falling apart in front of her eyes.  
‘Why are you up at this time? It’s gone four?’  
It was as if Ginny’s voice had flipped a switch in Hermione’s brain; her face crumpled and the tears that had been threatening to spill all day began to cascade unendingly down her face. Ginny rushed to her friend, gently guiding her to the sofa by the fireplace before slowly sitting down beside her. Placing a hand on Hermione’s face and turning it towards her own Ginny made eye contact with the older witch, trying to wordlessly communicate that Hermione was safe, she wasn’t alone, she was going to be ok, but Hermione’s trembling did not cease and her jaw was clenched so tightly that it looked almost painful and Ginny was worried because she still hadn’t said a single word and she had never ever known Hermione to be short of things to say.  
‘Hermione are you ok?’  
Hermione’s mouth opened and Ginny felt a momentary rush of relief before she saw the sheer panic which flooded Hermione’s eyes as she suddenly began to gasp for breath, clutching at her chest and wheezing. The girl was totally submerged in complete and utter terror; the thought of how Ron would react tomorrow when she had no essay to give him, the poorly concealed bitterness from Harry after another Quidditch practise with the borrowed Cleansweep, Hagrid’s disappointment when she would have to tell him that she couldn’t find anything else to help Buckbeak, she’d been through every book in the library and there just wasn’t anything there. She was letting down everybody and it was suffocating her, the weight of everybody’s expectations sat on her chest like a Hungarian Horntail and she couldn’t breathe. Hermione didn’t know what to do because she couldn’t breathe and her extremities were beginning to tingle with numbness and she could barely see through her tears and she just couldn’t breathe. Was this dying? Was she dying? Was this how she died; huddled on the sofa in the Gryffindor common room while Ginny Weasley watched on in horror?  
Ginny.  
Hermione froze. She was suddenly aware of a gentle pressure against her back, not unpleasant, but she certainly hadn’t noticed it until now. The ringing in her ears began to subside as she drew in a ragged breath and she could hear the sound of slow breaths and a gentle voice whispering: _you’re going to be ok, I’ve got you. Deep breaths ‘mione, it’s all going to be ok_. Focussing on the sound of Ginny’s breathing, Hermione slowly began to synchronise her own shuddering breaths with Ginny’s, until the numbness in her fingers had completely dissipated and the icy panic which had clogged her lungs melted away. She didn’t know how she’d ended up wrapped in Ginny’s arms but this was the safest she’d felt for weeks and it was reluctantly that she extricated herself from the younger girl. Ginny too felt an unwelcome chill at the loss of contact but pushed it aside, instead smiling sadly at the tear stained witch who sat before her.  
‘I- I’m sorry about that,’ Hermione almost whispered, eyes fixed on her hands as she knotted them tightly in her lap.  
She paused, swallowing the rising lump in her throat as she looked back up at her friend, eyes swimming again.  
‘I don’t know what just happened’ she choked out, her bottom lip trembling as she fought to control herself.  
‘I think you had a panic attack Hermione,’ Ginny said gently. She went to speak again but paused, she needed to tread lightly, the older witch was vulnerable right now and the last thing she wanted was to upset her further.  
‘I think it’s been coming for a while,’ she continued, ‘when’s the last time you had a proper night’s sleep?’  
Hermione laughed mirthlessly, tears slipping silently down her cheeks.  
‘I honestly don’t remember.’  
Ginny felt her heart break in her chest.  
Hermione sighed, leaning back into the warmth of the sofa she felt her wand in her pocket and wordlessly cast _incendio_ , reigniting the dying embers of the fire. Looking back to Ginny, she saw the incredulous look on her friend’s face and frowned.  
‘What?’  
‘You just cast incendio non-verbally?’  
Hermione nodded dumbly, feeling her cheeks begin to heat up.  
‘That’s like, sixth year stuff at the earliest! Where on earth did you learn it?’  
The older girl shrugged, pulling a blanket off the back of the chair and draping it across both their legs.  
‘I have private tuition with McGonagall once a week; she said it was to make sure I was stretching myself, not getting bored, you know? The transfiguration content for third year isn’t too bad, aside from animagi, so she offered to help me get ahead.’ Hermione paused, toying with the frayed edge of the blanket and her voice grew small as she muttered ‘and anyway, it’s not like I’ve got much else to do besides work,’  
Ginny’s brow furrowed, something didn’t add up; the red head looked over at the table, still dripping with ink, and counted the number of books scattered across the desk- arithmancy, ancient runes, history of magic, astronomy…  
‘Hermione how on earth are you doing all these classes?’  
Her back stiffened and that panicked look from before began to trickle into her face; Ginny saw it coming and immediately reached over and grabbed her friend’s hand, squeezing it between her own.  
‘Hermione you can tell me.’  
The older girl seemed to visibly deflate; she rubbed her thumb across the back of Ginny’s hand before returning it to her lap and taking a deep breath.  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------  
Hermione told Ginny everything.  
From the Time-Turner to her frustration over divination to Buckbeak’s trial to Ron and Harry not talking to her to that bloody firebolt to the four times she had just relived the hours between 3 and 4 am to her guilt over not being there last year to her crippling fear of letting everybody down all the way back to Ron’s essay which was still dripping ink onto the stone floor.  
And Ginny just let her talk. She didn’t interrupt, she didn’t try to fix it, she just sat with Hermione, wiping the tears when they fell, nodding vehemently when Hermione called her brother a prat and letting the brains of the golden trio finally let down her guard. By the time Hermione’s voice began to crack and Ginny’s yawns could no longer be held back, the first rays of sunrise were just beginning to tumble through the stained glass window, casting kaleidoscopic patterns across the common room. Her face bathed in multicoloured light, Hermione looked at her friend and smiled before pulling her into a tight embrace.  
‘Thank you’ she whispered into Ginny’s fiery locks.  
‘Anytime’ came the soft response.  
Later that day, Hermione would nervously approach Ron at breakfast because she hadn’t finished the essay, and she really was so sorry and she needed to tell him before they got to class so he wouldn’t be completely embarrassed in front of McGonagall, but before she would be able to tell him, he would grin at her, waving a roll of parchment in her face, thanking her for leaving the essay outside his dorm for him and praising it as her best yet because ‘it actually sounds like me, just smarter!’. Hermione would sit down beside him, dumbstruck, because surely she couldn’t have written a whole essay in her sleep, until she caught the eye of the girl sitting across from her. And Ginny Weasley would grin and Hermione would be so close to tears because this girl cared about her enough to write an essay a whole year ahead of her working level for her stupid git of a brother, just so that she didn’t have to.  
This would all happen in a couple of hours, but for now, the two girls just held each other, and that was enough.


End file.
